The past centuries of Croatian history are so interesting and if you are of Croatian origin, I’m sure you would like to know as much as you can about the history of your family. In order to do that in Croatian, you probably want to know how to make questions in the past tense in the Croatian language. So, here we go… Let’s learn some Croatian! 🙂

If you have already read our previous posts about tenses in Croatian…

The past tense in the Croatian language, affirmative 
The past tense in the Croatian language, negative
The present tense of the verb biti (to be) in the Croatian language, affirmative 
The present tense of the verb biti (to be) in the Croatian language, negative
The present tense of the verb biti (to be) in the Croatian language, interrogative
The present tense in the Croatian language, affirmative 
The present tense in the Croatian language, negative 
The present tense in the Croatian language, interrogative 
The future tense in the Croatian language, affirmative 
The future tense in the Croatian language, negative 
The future tense in the Croatian language, interrogative 

…you can probably guess how to make a question in the past tense, and don’t even need this blog post. But just in case, to confirm your brilliance, here is how it goes…

INTERROGATIVE PAST TENSE = INTERROGATIVE BITI (TO BE) + MAIN VERB with one of the following endings:

Singular: -O (masculine) / -LA (feminine) / -LO (neuter)
Plural:     -LI (masculine) / -LE (feminine) / -LA (neuter)

Here are the interrogative forms of the verb biti (to be), just as a reminder:

Step two, the same as in the affirmative and negative form, is adding the matching ending to the main verb, as shown in the scheme above:  -O (masculine) / -LA (feminine) / -LO (neuter) for singular, or  -LI (masculine) / -LE (feminine) / –LA for plural.

And finally, let’s have a look at what the interrogative form of the past tense in Croatian looks like, using the verb učiti (to learn) as an example:

*In Croatian, ono (it) does not refer to an object, but to any neuter noun, even if it means a person, like dijete (child). So, Je li (ono) učilo? can mean Je li dijete učilo?

For example:

So, the subject can be left out here as well? 

Yes. If you read our posts regularly, then you already know that you can drop the subject (e.g. ti, vi, oni, Ana, Ivan…) from all forms of sentences – affirmative, negative or interrogative – in all tenses, as long as it’s clear from the context who the subject is. Check links to all tenses (above) if you want to refresh your knowledge. 

Can you form a question using the past tense? What are you going to ask your Croatian relatives or friends?

If you want to learn Croatian online with a teacher one-on-one, don’t hesitate to book your free trial lesson here.

Learning Croatian continues… Next Tuesday we are learning about how to change personal pronouns in the Croatian language through cases. If you want us to send you an email with the next Croatian grammar lesson, put your email address here.